My Mom plans to style it this way with a solid or printed collared shirt in the fall and with a camisole or t-shirt in the spring and summer.
Do you ever finish gifts super late?
Knitting a ranch house |
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This is a knitting project that is long overdue. My Mom not so subtly handed me a copy of this pattern that she had admired on a co-worker months ago. I thought I had plenty of time and ordered the yarn to make it 2 months before her birthday. I even made really good progress on knitting the whole back in a week or so. Then I got super nauseas and tired and even though it is not hard to sit on the couch and knit, it felt impossible and this project stalled to a halt. So here it is, 3 months late. My Mom plans to style it this way with a solid or printed collared shirt in the fall and with a camisole or t-shirt in the spring and summer. This is the very creatively named "short sleeve top" from Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2005. Ravelry link here. It's quite a simple design with a twisted front feature and crochet edging along the edges and sleeve hems. It is not a challenging knit at all but I found that the instructions were a bit unclear to me. I wonder if it was to save space in the magazine that caused the instructions to be quite concise. Everything was there it just often took a bit of figuring to know what was meant. For example, it would be written to follow a certain decrease pattern for the shoulders and then mention while at the same time to follow a pattern from another section of the instructions. I felt like this led to a lot of jumping around for a basic pattern. I wanted this to be simple TV knitting, as it's mostly stockinette, so I ended up writing out the instructions for myself line by line so I could pay less attention. The only change I made to the pattern was to add sc crochet edging to the keyhole that the twist goes through to strengthen and tidy this area as I found the knitted section without it was getting pulled to leave gaps between stitches. A criticism of the pattern is that the twist feels a bit bulky (this was even before the crochet reinforcement). Once the scallop edging is added it feels too wide for the hole it is meant to pass through. The crochet edging was a new technique for me. A bit of Youtube research and I was fine though. I'd say that the finishing (seaming and crochet) took just as long as the knitting of the body of the garment though. It does look a lot more polished with it, so I'm glad I stuck to it. I did not use the very luxurious Empire Silk as suggested in this pattern. It was hard to find and quite pricey if I could. I ended up using Knit Picks Shine Worsted which is a cotton/tencel blend that has a nice drape and shine to it. It also makes it a little easier to wear day to day and the care is a little easier. I love the buttery soft feel of this yarn. It has a beautiful sheen to it as well. Like all cotton it is certainly heavy when wet but it's not too stiff to be unpleasant to knit with. This yarn is the colourway platinum. It looks more like a beige/grey to me, but it is a nice neutral that will pair well with my Mom's wardrobe. I was starting to really hate this project during the finishing stages. It was more complicated than it should've been and I hate feeling so behind on a deadline but I'm very happy with the end result. Even better, my Mom seems to be happy with it, which makes it all worthwhile.
Do you ever finish gifts super late?
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AboutA blog to document my attempts to create a well-fitting wardrobe for myself and my family through sewing and knitting. Archives
August 2018
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